Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1887-11-08
THREE SORTS OF WOMEN
To be Seen Almost Any Day on the Main
Street of the Metropolis.


Street Of the Metropolis.
There are three distinct sorts of women
to be seen on Broadway, which divides
itself into three distinct streams Of females
streams which flow within definite limits
and rarely encroach on each others terri
tory. Women begin to be seen in num-
bers on broadway at about Forty fifth
street. These women are New Workers
pur ct simple On them are to be seen
what are distinctly New York STYLES. This
is the ground that fashion writers haunt
for hints as to the styles of the coming
season. They are slim, clean limbed, with
hair rs smooth as satin and cut in little
pointed bangs that are never curled and
never have a hair ont of place They wear
very rich and very simple clothes. with II
fit and finish that speaks of Paris, Lon
don and the very best dresSmakers and
tailors of this city. They never admit any
eccentricities Of Dress and are so severely
costumed that they considerably resemble
each other and would scarcely be called
beautiful so much as chic. This stream
flows down to Sixteenth street and there
it stops, absolutely and at once, and one
never sees a single woman of it below that
part Of town.
At Fourteenth begins n crowd of stran-
gers All along that thoroughfare the
strangers are mostly from the small towns
about New York, and provincialism has
marked them for its own. Their clothes
are echoes of past fashions, their bangs
are fiambOyant, they carry little hand
sachels and cluster about the shop win
dows, At home against their own back
ground they are very attractive looking,
but against the radiant freshness and fine
grooming of the New York girl they look
not quite well kept
After turning the Fourteenth street
corner one begins to see the western and
southern girls who wear expensive mate
rails that are well made but lack in style
This autumn one recognizes these women
by the heliotrope gowns that New York
abandoned last spring. They are, as a
rule, extremely pretty in a picturesque,
individual fashion. Particularly is this
true of the middle aged women, who re-
tain the beauty of their figures wonder
fully, and who have, many of them. big,
soft dark eyes and thick gray curls around
their brows. They are neither SO fair nor
so rosy as New York women.
Below Eighth street the crowd changes
for II third time and are native New
Workers again. These are the women
who work for their living, and may be
seen in groups of two and three going
home anywhere between and O'Clock
These women have n good looking sprink-
ling OF elderly, meager females in dingy
black, with anxious faces and little black
bags in which they carry their lunch to
the offices where they work Many Of
them are pretty and many young Their
clothes are evidently selected with an eve
to wear. the purchases evidently being
had in mind whether the material would
show spots and dust and whether it was
the same on both sides, so that it would
turn. Their general appearance shows
that they have been hard at work all day
and have had meaCer toilet appliances TO
repair damages before coming out on the
street Many of them walk arm in arm,
with n little independent half masculine
air that they have insensibly picked up
from their employers, and jostle through
the hurrying throngs of men without no.
ticing them. They are pretty and lady
like, as rule-New York World